


Hazel

by Lakritzwolf



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magnus' past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-07 05:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17954750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lakritzwolf/pseuds/Lakritzwolf
Summary: If anything will keep me save, it’s this picture, close to my heart. All my love, George





	Hazel

It was always in the eyes. That first look, for the duration of a single heartbeat.

Over the years and decades, Magnus had learned to identify that look; the split-second of attraction immediately followed by either confusion, anger, or denial. He had learned how to read those looks, and had developed and honed ways to deal with them. Knew when to pursue, and when to back off. Knew when to cautiously flash a quick smile, and when to feign disinterest with a hint of aggression. Having lived in several regions of the earth during centuries had taught him a few valuable lessons.

Most Downworlders had no such issues; after a time, vampires left feeble mundane norms behind anyway, refusing to be governed by them. Seelies never had such silly taboos, and neither had warlocks. Mundanes, however, could make their lives incredibly and totally unnecessarily complicated.

Those beautiful gentle hazel eyes though, they deserved the risk of a broken nose, and Magnus smiled - a quick, tiny thing over the rim of his glass. As expected, the young man gulped down a hasty sip of beer and didn’t look at Magnus again.

For a while. With his second beer those hazel eyes drifted back across the room, but every time the man those eyes belonged to realised Magnus was watching, he quickly looked away again.

Magnus was intrigued. To say the least. The young man wasn’t incredibly handsome, but his eyes were beautiful, as was his smile. Nursing his drink, Magnus was already pondering ways to discreetly approach him when the fates themselves provided the chance. One of the men sharing a table with the young man produced a deck of cards, but they were obviously one man short. And even as one of them started looking around, Magnus was already out of his chair.

After having purposefully lost a substantial amount of money, Magnus had carried home a far larger prize: The young man’s name was George. Magnus wondered what he was doing so close to the front lines; with his voice as gentle as his eyes, George wasn’t born to be a soldier. But he believed in the cause with a passion.

George was never in denial. He was scared of being found out, yes, but so was Magnus, even if only for George’s sake and not his own. There were too many stolen glances and sneaked, hidden touches, and their first kiss, when it finally happened at the dead of night hidden in the bushes while out on night guard duty, was the sweetest kiss Magnus could remember.

The need for secrecy was a special kind of torture, privacy an unheard-of luxury in cramped army camps. Magnus and George, friends so close they might as well be brothers, of course they would share a tent. But even a tent with no one but the two of them only gave the illusion of privacy. In the end, Magnus tied a few sticks and feathers together and hung that bundle up in the tent, telling George it was a charm he had bought, and that no one would disturb them that night.

And George, his eyes so full of love and trust, had kissed him, and Magnus’ wards had kept every sound inside and everyone else at a distance.

It was the first and last night they ever had.

The colonel put together a team with sunrise, a sabotage operation into enemy territory. Counted the men in pairs, one, and two, one, and two. And if Magnus hadn’t positioned himself next to George, as he always did, they would have gone together. As it was, George was a one, and Magnus a two. The despair had clearly been written in George’s eyes.

As they parted, Magnus gave George the photo, the only one they had been able to make, a few weeks prior when victory had seemed within reach. But the tides of battle had turned again, and now one half of the batallion advanced on the enemy in a perilous undertaking, while the other half did the same from the other side of the enemy lines.

They had to say farewell in front of everybody else, so there could never be more than a hug between friends. George didn’t dare to meet his eyes, and Magnus didn’t press. He was using all his force of will to keep his eyes dry, and didn’t want to upset George with seeing that. They both knew this might be their last goodbye.

Everything in Magnus longed for a proper farewell. To hold him in a warm embrace one last time, to kiss those sweet, soft lips of his. He wanted to, with every fibre of his being. But social norms forced them to hug like almost strangers, and Magnus watched him go.

The letter arrived a week later, together with the photograph.

Magnus didn’t have to ask about the rusty brown stains.

Staring at the picture, the letter on his knees, Magnus spent the night alone after having dared to use a tiny wisp of magic to clean the picture of blood.

George’s blood.

Wiping the back of his free hand across his eyes, Magnus looked at the letter again, written in George’s beautiful, curved script.

_If anything will keep me save, it’s this picture, close to my heart. All my love, George_

It hadn’t kept him safe. Magnus hadn’t been able to keep him safe. For all his centuries, for all of his powers… he hadn’t been able to keep him safe.

Magnus brought the picture to his lips, brushing them across the image of George’s face.

“Sleep well, my sweet one,” he whispered. “I will never forget you.”

If only there had been more time. Just one more night of feeling his skin, just one more embrace, just one more kiss...

And with his vision blurring he wondered if there would ever come a time when two men, like him and George, might live their love openly and freely. If there would ever come a time when people would only see lovers, when two men smiled at each other while taking each other’s hands. If there would ever come a time when a love like theirs wouldn’t have to waste away behind the ugly veils of secrecy.

And then…

Another set of beautiful hazel eyes, another pair of lips curved into a bashful smile.

“Who are you?” He had said.  
_Please, not again_ , he had thought.

But in the end, as he now looks into those beautiful hazel eyes, Magnus wouldn’t change a single moment of his life, as it had led him here, to this man looking at him as if Magnus had hung the moon. And the two words falling from those lips are Magnus’ whole world, in this moment, and will be, in all moments yet to come.

Magnus’ heart is soaring, but even at the heights of his happiness Magnus knows that the tiny drop of bitterness, caused by the losses and heartbreaks of his long life, will always be a part of him, a fact he cannot and will not deny. He allows his thoughts to stray for the fraction of a heartbeat.

But then all echoes from the past fall silent, and the last traces of pain wash away.

“I do,” Magnus says.

George would have been happy for him.


End file.
